Multiculturalism in Canada by Hugh Donald Forbes

Author:Hugh Donald Forbes
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030198350
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Discomforts in Global Civilization

In his Massey lectures, Taylor highlights three philosophically interesting shortcomings that some critics see in modern European and North American culture, three “malaises of modernity,” namely, individualism (or indifference to social obligations), the primacy of instrumental reason (or the dominance of technology), and the loss of political freedom (or the growth of the “soft despotism” made possible by the decline of citizenship and mass alienation from the public sphere). Only the first of these “malaises,” the one generated by the modern idea that individuals are able (and should be encouraged) to live according to their own value systems, gets detailed consideration. Critics of our culture such as Allan Bloom, Taylor says, often point to “the dangers of individualism and the fading of meaning,” but the individual freedom that has been won by breaking through older moral horizons may still be seen, Taylor says, as “the finest achievement of modern civilization” (MM 2, 12). The critics allege that it has created a society that lacks any sense of higher or nobler purposes than the pursuit of petty pleasures; they say it manages to be both sceptical and moralistic by arguing that all value choices ought to be respected because none of them can claim to be true. Taylor concedes that this slackness and muddled thinking share a basic principle with the individualism of authenticity, self-realization, and self-revelation, but he seems to side with it nonetheless, stating its basic principle as follows:Everyone has a right to develop their own form of life, grounded on their own sense of what is really important or of value. People are called upon to be true to themselves and to seek their own self-fulfilment. What this consists of, each must, in the last instance, determine for him- or herself. No one else can or should try to dictate its content (MM 14).

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